Top crime writer at Festival of Chichester

Phil Hewitt

Bestselling crime writer Peter Robinson offers a talk for the Festival of Chichester in Chichester Cathedral on Wednesday, July 12.

Peter’s first DCI Alan Banks book, Gallows View, was published in 1987, so 2017 is his 30th anniversary book.

Banks, now Detective Superintendent, takes on another difficult case with his team after a killing at a wedding. Peter will speak in Chichester a day before the publication of the new book, Sleeping in the Ground. The talk starts at 6.30pm. Tickets: £6 each available from Chichester Library or online from Chichester Box Office.

A shocking mass murder occurs at a wedding in a small Dales church and a huge manhunt follows. Before the police can bring in and question the assumed culprit, he is found dead in his home. It seems that all the

evidence points to a cut and dried case of a guilty man committing suicide.

However, Banks and a number of his colleagues are plagued with doubts as to exactly what happened outside the church that day, and why. Whilst struggling with the death of his first serious girlfriend and the return of profiler Jenny Fuller into his life, Banks digs deeper into the murders, and as he does so, he uncovers forensic and psychological puzzles that lead him to the past secrets. They might just provide the answers he is looking for. But when the surprising truth becomes clear, it is almost too late.

Spokeswoman Rosie Stephen said: “This is a Banks novel with a quite different, more serious, tone. Banks is taking a look at his life and finds that looking back isn’t necessarily a happy thing to do. It might just be that his single status is not what he is wanting and he feels the need to pull his friends more closely around him...

“Peter Robinson’s DCI Banks has been a major ITV1 drama starring Stephen Tompkinson as Inspector Banks, and Andrea Lowe as DI Annie Cabbot. Peter’s critically-acclaimed Banks novels regularly appear in the number one slot on the Sunday Times bestseller list, and have won him numerous awards in Britain, the United States, Canada and Europe, and are published in translation all over the world. His standalone novel Before The Poison won the IMBA’s 2013 Dilys Award as well as the 2012 Arthur Ellis Award for Best Novel by the Crime Writers of Canada. This was Peter’s sixth Arthur Ellis award.

“Peter grew up in Yorkshire and now divides his time between Richmond and Canada. He keeps a website at www.inspectorbanks.com.”

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